GRID only has two full-time employees, including Callanan. The $2.2 million also funds six outreach workers, two prevention coordinators, one adult probation officer and a job trainer. There's a small chunk of money for police overtime for coordinated operations, and another chunk for grants to faith-based efforts and community nonprofits. GRID also pays for training on gang-related subjects; in two years, it's hosted 72 sessions and trained more than 3,500 people from various agencies.
But mostly, GRID relies on making connections between existing programs and convincing them that the strategies it is pushing are worth paying for — which organizers see as a more sustainable plan than just handing out money. "We focus on coordination," Callanan says. "Everybody has a role, and it's already what you're doing."
Bryan Butler, Terrance Roberts and John Lewis of the Prodigal Son Initiative work with youth in northeast Park Hill.
Johnny Santos, an outreach worker with the Gang Rescue and Support Project, likes that GRID brings all agencies to the table.
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Gallardo describes GRID as the phoenix that rose from the ashes of the Metro Denver Gang Coalition. It might not be perfect, he says, but "it makes people feel that Denver gives a shit. You can say that the city really does care.
"My biggest thing," he adds, "is having people be patient with the process."
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"Miss, I got a question for you. Are you a cop?"
The pudgy ten-year-old isn't shy about blurting out the question, just as he hadn't been shy last week about telling the class that he knew where to get a gun. Not wanting to call attention to what he'd said at the time, Laura Sanchez pretended she hadn't heard him. This week, she looks him in the eye and answers calmly. "No," she says. "I'm a probation officer."
Sanchez is one of two Denver juvenile probation officers who work for GRID as prevention coordinators. Her main job is to teach the G.R.E.A.T. Program, which stands for Gang Resistance Education and Training. It's a course much like D.A.R.E., but it teaches elementary and middle-school students to stay away from gangs. G.R.E.A.T. is new to Denver, and during the past school year, Sanchez taught it at four schools in the northeast part of the city. This summer, she's doing a modified version at the Boys and Girls Club Camp H.E.R.O., a free camp at Manual High School attended by 290 kids each day.
The campers choose their own activities, and on this stiflingly hot Monday afternoon, three boys and three girls come to a stuffy classroom to learn about gangs. It's clear they've already gotten an education from the streets, so Sanchez throws out a few statements — gangs will protect you, snitching is bad, girls don't join gangs — and asks whether they're true. One boy offers his own: "People say that if you want to be in a gang, you have to shoot somebody, and to get out of a gang, you have to get shot."
"That's not always true," Sanchez says. There are lots of ways to be initiated into a gang, she says; some are harmless and some are hurtful. Girls are often "sexed in." If you date a gang member, Sanchez warns, he might offer you up to the rest of the gang.
That catches the attention of a thin girl in short shorts and a sparkly zip-up sweatshirt who's spent most of the hour whispering to her friends and doodling on her hand. "Miss, can I talk to you?" she asks timidly after the class is over.
Sanchez pulls up a plastic chair. "You're going to tell me you have a boyfriend who's a gang member, aren't you?" Sanchez asks. The girl nods. He's a Crip, she says, and she tells Sanchez his first name. Her parents don't know they're dating; she's only eleven and her boyfriend is twelve. Sanchez asks if he's violent. The girl hesitates. He's beaten people up, she says, including another boy who slapped her butt on the light rail.
"What are you going to do?" Sanchez asks.
"I think I'm going to break up with him," the girl says. She's tried before, but the boyfriend always ends up crying and she takes him back. Sanchez gives the girl some advice, a hug and her business card. "Now, that's my personal cell phone," she says.
Moments like that happen all the time, say Sanchez and Deborah Garcia Sandoval, who teaches the G.R.E.A.T. program in southwest Denver. Part of their job is to offer case management to the younger siblings or children of gang members to divert them from following suit. "This is trying to get them before they're adjudicated," says Garcia Sandoval, who's been a probation officer for 21 years.
G.R.E.A.T. is easily the most fully formed of GRID's prevention strategies. The others include mobilizing neighborhoods to do positive projects and developing a "safe passage" program to ensure that kids feel safe walking to school. Another idea is a partnership between the Denver police and Denver Human Services to have a social worker follow up after cops raid a gang house where children also live. Oftentimes, kids are forced to watch the police toss their apartments and arrest their big brothers.
The police are already collaborating with parole and probation. Part of GRID's suppression strategy is to facilitate meetings between law enforcement agencies to discuss gang activity and plan a coordinated response. Scott Prendergast, a supervisor of adult probation in Denver, is a regular at the meetings. Denver is the only city in Colorado that has a gang unit in its probation department. Formed six years ago, it's made up of three officers who supervise about 100 offenders at any given time. The officers are specially trained to understand gang life — and the difficulties of leaving it behind.
